


The Naturalist Instinct

by dridri93



Series: Clone-tober 2020 [2]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Flora & Fauna, Fluff, Gen, Gree Is a Nerd, Zoological Nerdery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:34:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26778961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dridri93/pseuds/dridri93
Summary: Gree stumbles across an interesting new organism after the mission is completed... Naturally, he has to investigate. His men are far less enthused.
Relationships: CC-1004 | Gree & Luminara Unduli
Series: Clone-tober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948393
Comments: 16
Kudos: 63





	The Naturalist Instinct

**Author's Note:**

> Day 2 of Clonetober! This time, the prompt was _Gree+Doubt_. So of course I went full fluff.
> 
> All creatures included in this fic are from Wookiepedia, without whom I would've gone down the rabbithole of creating a new species down to its ecological food-web, and never have finished this. Three cheers for the wiki!

“Sir, I don’t think this is the best idea–”

Gree waved Buzz down. He needed _silence_. He kept his eyes locked on the bulbous yellow eyes that flicked between him and Buzz, moving independently of one another. He took in the details of this new creature and cross-referenced them to the texts he’d read – long limbs, independent eyes, red skin with a series of blue-green spots… “Ha!” he said to himself. “Pherin. Never seen one of those before.”

Buzz sounded very put-out when he said, “Wonderful, Commander, now can we back _away_ from the – the _fah-rin_? Thing?”

Gree shook his head, trying to clock the pherin’s gender – only the males and neutral-gendered were truly aggressive. Of course, the text’s he’d read hadn’t _specified_ how to tell, but the parts were pretty distinctive.

He hoped.

“D’you think it’s a male?” he asked absently.

“Commander,” Draa said, standing cautiously behind Buzz. “I don’t care if it’s tap-dancing on the Chancellor’s head wrapped in shimmersilk – could you. Could you back away please?”

Gree shook his head slowly, seeing the pherin’s eyes snap back to him at the movement. “Pretty sure this one’s protecting young,” he said, “based on its posture – see the hunch to its forelegs?”

Buzz swallowed, audible even through the vocoder. “That’s when animals are most aggressive isn’t it. Like with the tauntauns on Hoth.”

“ _Exactly_ like that tauntaun on Hoth,” Gree confirmed. “Good memory, Sergeant. Pherins don’t have any venom–” that he knew of “– but they have been known to use improvised weapons.” He kept one eye on the pherin – he suddenly wanted eyes that could move independently like its could, that seemed _useful_ – as he checked on Draa and Buzz behind him, at the front of their two squads of troopers. His men were looking restless.

They were probably remembering the dinko.

“Let’s go around,” he decided. “No need to make the local wildlife an enemy along with any stray clankers we meet. This is supposed to be a quick in-and-out job, and we’ve done the hard part.”

The General moved to the front of their little column, obviously done with her comm to the _Tranquility_. “Commander Gree?” she asked quietly, “Are we cleared to move on?”

“All clear, sir,” he confirmed. “Think we should let this little, uh, guy be, though. Go around. Reduce their stress so their young have better chances.”

The General smiled softly, glancing at the pherin. “A wise decision,” she agreed. “This particular female is feeling very, hm. Testy.” Gree was glad to see his general smile; he hadn’t seen many of them since the disaster with Commander – well. Since Offee.

“A female? How do you know?” he asked, trying to distract himself from the reminder of Offee. He _was_ curious, if it was some characteristic she knew to look for or if it was –

“The Force,” the General answered, eyes bright.

Gree _knew_ she knew that he wanted a better answer than ‘the Force’. Agh. He’d have to research pherin when he got back to the _Tranquility_.

He sighed as he straightened, stretching the kinks from his back from being hunched over too long. “As you say, sir.” Force, he was getting old.

He stepped away from the pherin, still hunched protectively in front of what he could now see was a burrow of some sort. “Alright, men,” he said, “we’ve completed the main objective – setting up the LZ and entry path for the strike team coming in hot – and it sounds like General Unduli has sent the signal to that team.” He turned to the General to see her nod. “Good. Our job here is done – time to get back to the larties and get our sorry muddy asses off this dirtball.”

“Sir!” his men replied as one. He straightened in approval, nodding once.

He turned back to the pherin one last time as his men took a conspicuously wide arc around her burrow. “Will she be alright, do you think, General?” he asked. “When the team comes through?”

General Unduli tilted her head, eyes thoughtful. “I can direct them to a slightly different approach, to ensure they dodge the dangerous obstacle in our path,” she offered, raising an eyebrow with another small smile.

“That… that would be nice,” Gree said. “To protect the team from dangerous wildlife, of course.”

“Of course,” General Unduli confirmed. “I’ll make the comm once we’re out of the atmosphere.”

Gree did _not_ sigh in relief. He sighed because his knee popped loudly and it felt like a knot of tension he hadn’t even noticed suddenly released.

Maybe it was a little bit of relief.

He couldn’t help but feel for the little pherin, just trying to protect her young and her home. Just like the natives of dozens of planets he’d visited and freed from the clanker’s control. Or tried to. It took guts to look up at a being fives times your size and strike out.

He could respect that.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, turning to walk away, watching the pherin slowly relax in the 360-degree view of his HUD. That he’d turned on to keep track of any other potential threats. Obviously. “Any ideas of our next assignment?”

General Unduli hummed. “We have been routed to Kashyyyk,” she said quietly. “A droid invasion force threatens the Wookiees, and the Council feels that, if we are to win this war, we cannot lose Kashyyyk or the support of the Wookiees.”

Gree hummed thoughtfully. “Good warriors, the Wookiees,” he said. He meant it, too – any sentient being that could survive a planet full of carnivorous plants and enormous arachnids, let alone establish the complex civilizations the Wookiees had established centuries ago, deserved commendation. “Do you think they’d let me learn about the wroshyr trees? Once we win?”

He smiled under his bucket to see the general muffle a laugh behind a hand. “I think that if you asked _very_ kindly, Grandmaster Yoda could tell you about the time he fought a terentatek.”

His bucket hid his dropped jaw as they stepped into the clearing where the men waited on the larties for their commanding officers. “General Yoda killed a _terentatek_?” he asked.

“Well, not _killed_ ,” General Unduli clarified as they stepped into the lartie, the spooling-up of its engines nearly drowning out her voice. “But he did face one and escaped.”

“You’re pulling my kama,” he said. Never mind that he didn’t wear kama. It was the spirit of the thing.

“No, no!” General Unduli said, swaying with the movement of the rising lartie. “I swear on the Force, Commander – ask Master Yoda when we reach Kashyyyk.”

Gree subsided, letting the turbulence of Nyriaan’s atmosphere rock him from side to side. He thought about it, little General Yoda standing against a massive terentatek. He couldn’t see it, even if he _had_ seen General Yoda bounce like a limmie ball made of lightsaber blades around a squad of clankers that one time.

He’d have to ask when they got to Kashyyyk.

**Author's Note:**

> And Palpatine chokes on his aspirations and dies, and Gree gets to not only hear Yoda tell the whole story of his fight with the terentatek but _also_ gets to see Wookiee dragon warriors riding their katarn mounts. _I have spoken._
> 
> Leave a comment and/or a kudos if you enjoyed! Find me on tumblr at medic-kix and scream about clones with me!


End file.
